


Saved

by Kerjen



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-02
Updated: 2013-12-02
Packaged: 2018-01-03 05:33:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1066355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kerjen/pseuds/Kerjen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Doctor John Smith is saved by a mysterious woman named River Song who nearly dies in the process.</p><p>Time Period: 1974</p>
            </blockquote>





	Saved

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cmartlover](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cmartlover/gifts).



> Thank you to GrumpyJenn for the beta!

The stars above his head sparkled with such light, he felt there were more of them in this one sky than at any other moment in history. It felt like magic.

John gave himself over to the pleasant coolness of this peaceful evening as he sat on his laid out coat with his eyes raised to the heavens. He couldn't believe he felt content just sitting here with nothing but the night keeping him company.

Except he was wrong. He wasn't alone: someone lay next to him on his coat. She languidly filled the evening, giving the night its atmosphere and the presence that made him content and happy just to be here. How did she make him feel this way? He had sworn to never do this to himself again, not after having his heart crushed the first time and then hurt again when he and Rose had split up.

He looked down at this woman from nowhere. The darkness lightened ever so slightly as it flowed along her curves. Did the night form her or did she wear it like an artist's drape that she spread across the world? Her smile lightened the dark as if she read his mind. Oh yes, a _woman_ , not a girl.

_Who are you ?_

But something underneath his coat, something jagged and hard, dug into his back and made it ache. More than ache, it _hurt_. Badly. His breath suddenly choked and refused to come. The air stung his nose and clogged his throat. He tried desperately to draw in a mouthful of air, lifting a hand from the coat on the ground to his chest. Racking coughs started tearing at his lungs and they burned.

"Easy, sweetie. You're going to be just fine."

He tried looking around to her. She had moved from his side, but his eyes.... his eyes were shut. When had he done that? When did they start feeling so gritty? He forced them open but only managed a bare slit. He almost shut them again from the rising sun blinding him. 

  


Her hand slipped behind his head, cradling it gently. Her touch glided into the hair at the nape of his neck, bringing soothing relief to the headache he realized was pounding along his scalp. She brought a bottle to his lips.

"Here, try to drink. It will help clear the dust.' She held his head and the bottle as he drank. 'We're lucky that I was feeling thirsty and grabbed this before I got here.'

The water did cut through the grime clogging his throat and he blinked against the sunlight. She moved over him so she blocked the worst of it and it struck fire to her hair causing a golden halo around her head.

“You’re an angel,” he managed to say. He was struck dumb by the sight of her and wished the light didn’t silhouette her face.

She pulled back a bit in surprise and then gave a little chuckle. “That’s a new one. I ’m sorry to disappoint you, love, but it’s only that lightbulb working on this head of hair.”

He started coughing again and pain hit cruelly from his back to squeeze his lungs. It struck him in nauseating waves until he was afraid to open his mouth to cry out lest he get sick on her. She brought the bottle back to his lips. Ginger beer, he thought muzzily and licked his lips.

“Can you hold it?” she asked and he made positive noises. He started to nod before the stone scraping along his skull reminded him it was a bad idea. “No, don’t move!” she echoed along with his thoughts. “Let’s see how you are first.”

Her hands started trailing down his body and he nearly spit out the ginger beer. “Did I hurt you?” she asked anxiously, her hands stopping along his ribs.

“Not your fault,” he mumbled. She hadn't damaged that rib. He tried to think what had. It’s not why he had jumped anyway, but her hands on him sent pleasant shivers all through him.

“All right then. You tell me if any of this bothers you. We need to see where you’re injured. I’m hoping nothing is serious but we need to see. How are your legs?”

The word ‘injured’ started sweeping away the remnants of dream and dusty cobwebs clouding his thoughts. He could be injured; worse, someone else could be hurt and he lay here.

“They’re fine.” He spoke more clearly now and slowly flexed his legs to his toes.

“That’s good!” she cried, her hands moving lightly along as he moved. “You’re a bit bandy legged, must be a footballer. I can tell that even now. Arms good all the way to the fingers?”

“Yes -- no!” Pain shrieked along the nerves in his left hand as he moved his fingers. She quickly took the hand gently on hers and murmured about the swollen look of his first two fingers. It sunk in: the way she spoke and the gentle, impersonal touch, exactly where a professional would examine someone. He started to speak and his throat turned dry. Not the rib this time, but the dust. He grabbed for the bottle again. “Doctor--” he choked out.

“No,” she answered, her fingers now running along the back of his neck and into the hair again as she peered closer towards his eyes and head. “My uncle’s a nurse though. And I’ve had to do these things in the field here and there. Don’t know if that’s a bad thing or a good thing.”

“No,” he corrected, “I’m a doctor.”

“Oh! Doctor...?” she trailed off. But he started coughing against the dryness and that made that nauseous pain even worse. He drank the last swallow in the bottle. She patted his arm. “We’ll leave it at Doctor, then. I’m guessing you meant you’re a physician, in which case you’ll know better than me. Any signs of a concussion? You were unconscious when I found you. Dizziness? ”

“No, nothing like that.” He lifted his head a bit to see past her and she leaned out of the way. Everything flooded back. The car park, he was supposed to meet someone, and then came the deep rumble, the sounds of something meant to hold up the weight of thousands of men being hit in its Achilles heel. “What happened?”

“I don’t know. I can’t tell you if something like a earthquake hit or someone is behind it. Nasty thought, that.” The London area wasn’t known for earthquakes, but neither of them mentioned it. She sat back on her heels and he felt those eyes travel along him, rather than saw her do it, as she sized up the man he was. He hoped she saw a man and not a boy with his baby face, because her smile cut through the murk in the air. Being head to head with that smile made him think of the woman who had appeared in his dream, suddenly there, mysterious, and with the full intensity of a woman who loved being one. A man would understand that intensity. A boy would arrogantly think he did and wind up with bits of himself stuck in her teeth.

Despite how his thoughts ran, as he wished he could really see her in this dim light and dust, hers still ran along professional lines. “It looks like it’ s that rib and a couple bad fingers, plus the cuts and bruises for you, sweetie. Overall though, lucky man.”

His heart gave a good healthy thump on the ‘man ’. He quite liked the ‘sweetie’ too.

“I heard a rescue team earlier. They didn’t sound too far off. What do you say, Doctor? Should we try getting you on your feet?”

He slowly sat up, favoring that sore rib and paying close attention to his body protesting. He listened especially for anything that warned him it was more than a sore muscle or bruised bone. “Wait, you heard a rescue team? Why didn’t you get out?”

“I heard you in here so I came to investigate. Couldn’t leave you here, could I?”

Some people could and he was damn lucky she wasn’t one of them. He got to his feet but swayed. She immediately slipped under his arm on his good side and took his weight on her. “Easy, Doctor. Put your arm around my shoulders and lean on me. Don’t you worry, we’re getting out of here. This place would make a lousy tomb. I’ve seen enough of them to know.”

“You go looking at tombs?” But the building groaned under the weight of itself as its weakened hold gave way even more.

"Did you hear that?" she asked.

"Be a bit hard not to."

"Not the building! The people. Hello!" she called. "Can you hear me? We got an injured man here!"

"Oi!" he protested. He had done plenty of emergency triages in his time and he knew where he rated on the scale of injuries.

"Put your bruised masculine ego on hold, Doctor. You know if you weren't your own patient, you would order tests before sending you home with a couple of aspirins and orders to get some rest. Honestly!” She raised her voice again. “Can you hear me?”

He heard the distant replies this time. They could have been muffled by distance or rubble blocking them from getting rescued. He didn’t know which would be worse as the building protested again. The ground shook and pieces of the roof and walls started raining down. The woman next to him had him down on the ground with her body protecting his before he could do the same for her. He got an arm around her and pulled her down next to him with each of them tucking their heads down to protect them as much as they could.

I could very likely die here, he thought, and I don’t even know her name.

When they surfaced into the sea of dust and grime in the air, her curls were thick with the stuff and she was coughing too. His hands tingled with the want to brush through her hair and clear it back to being a halo.

“We have to pick up the pace.” Her voice nearly wheezed with what she was forced to breathe in. “Can you do that?”

They had no choice. So he stumbled and she dragged him towards the sound of rescue. 

“This way! This way!” a man’s voice called. A torch broke through the murk exposing a hole in one massive wall of the car park. “Nearly there! Hurry, this place is getting worse every minute!”

John just made out the man’s arm reaching out alongside the torch’s light. The building’s breakdown rang out in a growing roar and shriek. Flakes of filth and small debris fell in the first wave of the oncoming destruction. He had the vague thought that if they all stopped talking about the place coming down on their heads that it wouldn’t do it.

Mysterious women appearing, halos, and now buildings that responded to people jinxing themselves: maybe he did have a concussion. He tried not to think how many stories were above and below them.

“Move!” the man yelled and other hands thrust from the hole for them. They had to retreat in the next second as larger rubble nearly separated them from the rest of their bodies. 

John felt his companion reach around him and knew she was about to curl around him again against the falling wreckage.

He was so wrong.

She gave him hurriedly to the waiting rescuers. “Grab him!” she hollered and he was pulled through in the same breath. “He’s injured, be careful!”

The sickening sound of cracks tearing things apart shut everyone up and John got a quick glance as the people who had a hold of him got him steady on his feet and in their grasp. What he saw was a wide crack in the close ceiling and another on the floor. They came at her from different directions, the first fissures widening to form an arm with splayed fingers reaching for her in a twisted parody of the people trying to rescue them.

She looked up, but his view was blocked by everyone trying to push out to get her. He heard it in her voice though. She knew how it all had just turned against her. “You know you can’t, ” she called; she was firm and relentless.. John suddenly found a thick arm across the broken gap in the wall preventing anyone from doing something stupid... liking getting killed with her. “Go! I’ll find another way!”

John shoved against the hands that worked against him now and damn them, they were winning. His damaged body wouldn't listen to what he wanted it to do. “No!” he wanted to yell, but his rib wouldn't let him draw in the breath to do it.

“Go!” he heard her yell again. “Don’t you dare --”

He was already a couple metres away against his will when the building came down on her side.

  


He fought them the whole way, as much as he could. He did the same in the ambulance. She might have died to save him; he couldn’t just be whisked away like that was nothing! He had to be there, he had to see her come out of that building, alive and well. So even though his damaged ribs didn’t let him put up a good fight, he put up the best that he could.

So they sedated him, once in the ambulance and then again at the hospital when he came to and overheard a police constable saying they were still sifting through the wreckage for survivors. That some aggravated local bombed the building and tried to make it look like an IRA strike. John didn’t get anywhere as hands reached in to keep him pinned to the bed as Parker, one of his colleagues and a prat if there had ever been one, jabbed the sedative into his arm. 

When he woke up again, his fractured rib was bandaged up tight and so were the two first fingers on his left hand. His head still felt fogged from pain killers, but he didn’t complain. Without those, he couldn’t get to his feet over the nurses’ protest that he stay in bed. But he had to know what had happened to _her_. Had he got her killed because she had come back for him rather than get herself out when she had the chance?

Police officers of different ranks spilled into different corridors. He grabbed one and asked about her only to nearly get himself dragged into a room for a statement. “I’d have died if that woman hadn’t saved me, that’s my statement! Tell me where she is! _Aaaa_ -” The pain cut him off and he clamped his teeth shut against the nausea. 

A WPC took pity on him and thankfully knew the one thing he needed to know, the most important thing: his rescuer was alive. The woman constable pointed out the room down the hall and he thanked her as he stumbled off. He literally hit the door with his body and stopped.

“What are you doing here?” It wasn’t the nicest way to greet anyone, but of all the things he pictured he’d find in this room, he hadn’t figured on finding Amy Pond (he still hadn’t update her last name to Williams in his head) or his landlady Idris. No, he only called her that. She actually was Iris. “Were you looking for me?”

“No,” Amy said, a bit too firmly as she came over to check him out. “We saw you earlier, but you were asleep. They said they’d tell us when you woke up.”

That explained the temper in her voice. She thought the staff didn’t give a toss about what they had promised her. He swung around to the bed, catching a quick glance of bandages before he was interrupted by Pond outrage.

“ Your arse is hanging out of that thing! Have you been flitting about the place like that?”

He grabbed the back of his hospital gown and belatedly thought of how he was feeling chilly in the nether regions. He looked around the room hurriedly but of course didn’t see anything that would help. It wasn’t his room, and neither Amy nor Iris had extra clothes with them. Not that Amy’s modern mini dress would help him at all and Iris’ vintage look was longer, but would never fit him. He backed up carefully to the door and asked a nurse for some trousers.

He pushed his quiff out of his eyes and tried desperately to move the subject away from him by asking again why they were here.

Amy wasn’t letting him off the hook that easily, but she answer, “To see _her_ , you big dafty! Why else?”

He breathed a sigh of relief again that he hadn’t gotten this woman killed and reminded himself that whatever injuries she had were already treated. “That’s good of you, Pond. Thanking her for saving me.” 

But she rolled her eyes at him. “Not for _that_. Oh don’t look like that, we’re glad you're alive and you know it.”

Iris said, “I told you I had a niece.”

_NIECE_ _!_

Amy crossed her arms across her chest, a force of Scottish temper. “So did I.” 

“But, but--” He pointed to River. He never got a clear look at her, and he still couldn’t with Iris and Amy blocking his view, but from what he could remember she had looked older than them.

Amy sighed. “Honestly! Do you ever pay attention to anything that’s not about yourself? You know my father was married before my mother. He and his first wife had a son. Our older brother.”

“Donald,” Iris added.

“My dad then married my mum, ” Amy continued, “and they had me.”

John got where this is going. Donald had gotten married years before Amy was born, he knew. Years before Augustus had even married Tabitha. John clapped his hands together and rubbed them briskly against the other in excitement. “That means!”

Amy shook her head fondly at him. “Yes. River’s a Pond.” 

He giggled at the thought. He spun around to Iris, one hand keeping his gown closed. “And you are?”

“Donald and I have the same mother,” she said simply. He figured that put her between Donald and Amy, but he wondered. Iris always seemed older than she looked and he had once thought she might have had plastic surgery, to change her appearance to go along with the life that he knew she had before this one. He never dared ask. 

“So Donald had River!”

“Yes. Will you remember it this time?” Iris asked. “Because if not, I want to record it. I get tired of repeating myself for your sake. ”

He giggled again and pointed at the two of them as if he had just uncovered the connection. “You! And you! This is amazing!”

“Yes, it is, you numpty. And if you paid attention once in awhile, you could have been amazed years ago that River’s our niece.”

“Well,” he said, “not really a niece. More of an aunt herself or a big sister, surely.”

“No, niece,” Iris answered and something flashed in her eyes that he had seen before. That same life that he had no idea about, the one that came about long before he came across her and the big blue box that was her home. He had been lucky that she was renting out a flat and that he had got it.

“There’s a lot she doesn’t know, things she needs us for,” Iris said and Amy nodded. 

“ Because of who she is...” Amy trailed off. “Well, she needs us. To be her aunts.”

“To be more than her aunt if it was up to me,” said Iris and something flashed again dark, dark, dark. When he turned to ask Pond if she had seen it, he saw the same thing in her eyes.

“Idiot brother.”

“Worse than an idiot,” said Iris. “Total tossers, he and his wife.”

John looked between them. “River’s parents?”

Amy nodded. 

He knew not to say anything more about it. “So she’s River Pond?”

“River _Song_ ,” Amy said. “She changed it at one point.”

He loved that. Now he knew her name. He was alive because of River Song saving him. “Idris,” he began.

A weak voice called out. “Idris? Who’s calling you that?”

He didn’t get a chance to answer because Iris and Amy went rapidly to the bed. They blocked his view of River again as they each took a hand on either side of the bed and bent over her.

“Ignore him,” Iris said. “An idiot. The one I told you is renting the flat from me.”

“Oi!” John said. “How does that make me an idiot?”

“Please,” Iris said. “I saw you looking around at the houses and decided I liked you. Can’t just have anyone about the house. Left the door open a crack. I knew you’d run in. You’re an idiot for going through my mail to learn my name -- as if that wasn’t creepy -- and got it wrong. Keeps it wrong the rest of this time. You,” she said now to her niece, “are moving in to the other flat as soon as you are out of here.”

“You have another flat?!” John interrupted. He couldn’t help it. “I didn’t know you had another flat!” He shouldn’t be too surprised because every time he looked around, he discovered another room or a door he had never seen before leading off to another passage. He sometimes thought Iris grew them in the night and he had yet to find the heart of the blue box house where she kept her private quarters.

“Yes, I have another flat! And I kept it from you deliberately. Otherwise, knowing you, I’d be standing around and you’d be bringing back strays. No, thank you. He tried to bring back this little... _thing_ recently. Saying I could find room for her. I shut the door in her face and rang the claxon bell so it split her ears all the way up the street. I won’t put up with _that_!” she said ferociously, interrupting John just as he was about to defend Clara.

That bell was another part of Iris’ bag of tricks; someone had rigged the blue box with mechanics that she worked brilliantly and he usually mucked up when he tried them. Claxon bells, the opening and closing of doors, control over the lights and utilities... her home was an extension of her.

“Anyway, back to business!” He clapped his hands. “To the woman who saved my life, how do I look now? Better?” He went to do a spin for her, but remembered the hospital gown at the last second and quickly grabbed the back again. He felt the room temperature drop drastically and discovered it had nothing to do with his lack of trousers. It came from the aunts’ two freezing gazes on him. “What?”

That marked a good time for Rory to come in: Rory Williams, Amy’s husband and a nurse here at the hospital. Good man, Rory. He had taken a lot of abuse for being a man in what was considered a woman’s field, but now every doctor in the place fought to get him on their cases. And he held a pair of drawstring trousers for John.

Rory caught the two glares aimed in John’s direction, one hot and one cold. “What’s going on?”

In answer, Iris took a step back from where she stood protectively over River. That’s when John saw the bandages covering the eyes. _No_ _._

He was an idiot. Idiot, idiot, _idiot_ and worse. He snapped into his professional mode and leapt to her charts. “ Rory! Give me the run down.”

“It’s temporary,” Rory said. He went over to the bed, kissed the golden curls and whispered hello to his niece. That ’s right, Rory would be her uncle. Of course.

 _My_ _uncle_ _’_ _s_ _a_ _nurse_.

He shouldn ’t have missed that. Male nurses were incredibly rare. He should have at least wondered about her knowing one. 

She gave a smile against the pale skin. “Hello, Uncle,” she said.

He turned back to John. “You can see it all there. It is temporary,” he insisted, looking back down at River. “You’ll get your sight back. Don’t worry.”

“How?” John asked.

This time, River answered. “I’m here, you know. I can speak for myself. Apparently I was in a maintenance area. Cleaning fluids, who knows what else, all the containers burst and I caught it in my eyes.”

Her lungs caught some of it too; her breathing wheezed with it. That wasn’t all. Her chart showed she had caught shrapnel from the exploding containers. A long, metal sliver had punctured her right thigh and nicked the femoral artery. Yet, even with the burning in her eyes and lungs, she kept her mind about her and left the sliver in to keep pressure on the artery. The report said she even elevated the leg to keep the blood flow down from the injury. She had saved her life by doing that. Even so, she would died from losing blood if her rescue had come slightly later.

Because of him. None of this would have happened if she hadn’t stopped to save him. Well, he would pay that back in every way he could. He already ran the name of her ophthalmologist in his mind and what others had to say about him. If he wasn’t the best, then John was going to find the best for her. He could treat the rest of her injuries himself, although it really only meant changing bandages and physical therapy for her leg.

He nodded as all this ran through his head, forgetting she couldn’t see him. “Rory’s right. Definitely temporary. Nothing to worry about.” He was lying. A chemical burn to the eyes would make anyone worry, but he’d be damned if she didn’t get her sight back.

Her aunts’ hands tightened on hers and her own fingers curled around them. Rory’s protective hand slid on to her shoulder and stayed there. 

Amy cut through the heavy tension with a grin that River couldn’t see but could hear. “You’re not missing anything, River. He looks like the Raggedy Man.”

Iris’ laughter was rich and thrilled. “Yes! Oh the stories your mum would tell! I loved those. The Ponds’ Raggedy Man in person.”

Even River chuckled. John looked down at himself and wondered. Who was the Raggedy Man and did he really look that bad?

Amy grinned at him before turning to her niece. “I’m sorry you nearly died for an idiot, but we are glad you brought him back.”

“He’s _our_ idiot,” Iris summed up brightly.

“So, ” River asked. Her smile echoed the one from his dream and he suddenly realized that he never really saw her face and still couldn’t with the bandages. “Are you saying he was worth it?”

Amy smiled; Iris smiled. Rory said, “Well....” but nodded and squeezed her shoulder.

  


John looked up from the desk at the nurses’ station. The detective inspector came out of River’s room and passed by Amy on the phone. She whispered fiercely into the receiver, so John only caught a word or two.

The inspector handed over his notepad to a constable. “Miss Song’s statement. Add it to the others with Mr. Smith’s here.” He looked back over to Amy and shook his head. “It’s a damn shame, isn’t it? How bad things seem to hang around some people. What, you didn’t recognize the names, Cooper? ” He tapped a spot on his notes. “The doctor here called her aunt by her maiden name. Pond! C’mon, _Melody_ Pond! Kidnapping case, a baby girl. One of those where they didn ’t find her for decades? How do you think you’re making detective when you can’t remember a case like that. It’s textbook now.” 

Cooper was quick to redeem himself. “Wait, I remember. The kid who got away at one point? Dyed her hair, her skin colour, the works?”

The detective nodded. “Was using Zucker for a name. But they found her again anyway. Damn shame. But you don’t forget someone like that.”

John silently agreed and remembered Iris’ anger and Amy saying River needed them as her aunts. He crossed behind her on the phone.

“No one said you wished Melody any harm, you total git!” she hissed. “ And nobody said what happened was easy for you. But guess what? It’s just as hard for her, she lived it! And _you_ keep hurting her all over again! You’re not thinking about her, about what she wants which is _you_. You and her mum! How about you start by coming to see your daughter after she was nearly killed? How about you start with acknowledging she’s your _daughter_? You certainly remember Anthony’s your son and he didn’t nearly get killed by escaping people to get home to you!” She listened for a second. “That’s rubbish, Donald, and you know it. You’re making her take the punishment for what happened.”

That’s when John leapt forward and grabbed the phone. “ Hello, this is John Smith, I’m your daughter’s physician. Sorry, but I put a hold on you contacting Miss Song. Phone calls and visits. It’s too stressful for her and I can ’t allow it. I have to put my patient’s recovery first.” Just as he figured, Donald Pond protested once someone told him that he wasn’t allowed to talk to his daughter. People hated hearing ‘no’. He would never call the man on the other end “Mr. Pond”. He didn’t deserve it and frankly, John couldn’t believe he was a Pond. Rory was much more one that this arse. “I changed her next of kin to your sisters and brother-in-law, so you don’t have to worry about the hospital bothering you anymore. Everything’ s fine here, so I only need to tell you one more thing. Naff off.”

He added a British salute over the phone, not that the guy could see it, but it made him feel good. 

A passing senior physician stared at him for that or it could be for his hospital gown and surgical trousers. Whatever. A few senior staff didn’t like his quiff hairstyle or modern clothes. They told him if they wanted Mick Jagger working here, they’d hire him. His pointing out that Jagger had been voted last year as the ‘Best Dressed Man of the Year’ didn ’t change their opinion.

Rory was waiting next to Amy when he turned around and John swallowed. He had crossed a line. He saw it in Amy’s expression.

She took the necessary step to get in his face. “It’s family business, Raggedy Man. Private!”

“I know, Amy, and I’m sorry. If you wanted me to know, you would have told me.”

“It’s not for me to tell you, you moron. That’s up to River. Get it?” He nodded and hoped she could see how much he meant it. She blew out a breath. “But now you know, just keep it to yourself. Yeah?”

He completely agreed. He promised Amy and started to say something else. 

“Oh, just spit out, John. We came this far.”

“This is what you meant about she needs you as her aunts. Right?” 

“Someone has to teach her about family,” Rory said. He slipped an arm around Amy’s shoulders. “Someone has to teach her right and wrong. She didn ’t get it from her childhood. They taught her the opposite. She had to learn about the world and people, all of it.” Amy mumbled something under her breath and Rory leaned his forehead against hers before he finished. “The point is someone had to step in for Donald and Ailie and be there for her.”

John looked back to River’s room where Iris had stayed with her during the inspector’s questioning.

Amy perked up. “That reminds me. She has a temper and she’s stubborn. If she fights against her treatment, get Rory or call Iris or me. We’ll get her to listen to ‘no’.”

  


He hovered around River’s physicians until both they and she threatened to block him from her room. Although, she later admitted she was glad when he asked her ophthalmologist questions, because he caught details she didn’t know about. When she was released from the hospital, he split her care with Rory and her aunts. He cleaned her wounds and put fresh bandages on them. He gently put the ointment on her chemical burns all around her eyes and warned her not to try opening them yet. The wound on her thigh turned an angry red, but finally gave ground to the medications and started to heal. He was the one to remove the stitches when it came time and was glad when it was finally done. He was beginning to lose his professional detachment with River and it was such a personal area. Thankfully, she couldn’t see him blush the day he realized that.

Days passed and he walked up to the house with a whistle. The splint was off his fingers and his rib rarely bothered him now. He passed the sign he had put up with the house’s name, “The Blue Box”. He had insisted that if other people could name their house “The Meadow View”, then Iris’ home must be called nothing else but what he christened it.

He stopped at the threshold because of some interesting thing he had shoved into his pocket earlier and forgotten about, when suddenly, he was out on stoop again. The door slammed behind him, slapping him on the bum.

Iris. Of course. And her mechanics throughout the house. 

He spoke through the mail slot. “I’m sorry?” He paused. “I’m sorry I got your niece blinded.” Nothing. “I’m sorry I almost got her killed.” Although he thought he had already apologized about all that. He really meant it.

Nothing. 

“A hint?”

A piece of paper slipped through the slot and fluttered down to his feet. A summons. Something to do with violating a government reserved structure and numerous other words about lack of permit and such. Oh. “Idris, I’m sorry I painted the house to look like a police box. I’ll pay the summons and paint over it. I just thought -- I mean -- it looks like one with the blue and the panels and, and it’s a box! Shame about the light at the top. I rather like the light. To be fair, you said you liked it too.”

The door opened and let him in, seemingly of its own accord. Her voice came from behind him and he jumped. “I do like the light,” Iris agreed and walked down the hall. She turned abruptly and he nearly toppled over at the sudden stop. “And if River doesn’t get her sight back, we’re revisiting that one.”

They walked through the small foyer. Iris had changed the interior again. She tended to do that. He picked up on the new colours scattered about, probably because River was home. He had seen brighter colours in here before though, and he decided she had muted them because River was so injured. 

She abruptly turned and kissed him. He flailed, his arms pinwheeling, and too surprised to pull back. She did, however, after a second and looked at him. It was the same look everyone at the hospital had when they looked at the results of a test they had run.

“What was that?!” he yelled. “You kissed me!”

She shrugged. “Trying to decide.”

“Decide what!”

“If it’s something I want to do regularly. Hmm.” She lunged forward again and bit him on the neck.

“OW!” He jumped back this time and put a hand over the spot.

“I like biting,” she stated. “It’s like kissing but there’s a winner.”

“And the point of all this again is?!”

Her head turned to the side, contemplating him. He contemplated running out the door. “I did like it,” she said, “but I like kissing. It’s fun. But I don’t know if it’s _all_. There’s more. You and I. Yes, definitely more of other things. Hmmm... no., I mean I do love you, my beautiful idiot. But... no. Definitely more things. I needed to find out, of course.”

“Why!”

She blinked in surprise. It was so obvious to her. “Because now there’s River.” She contemplated him, her experiment, again. “I don’t think you’ll flail when it’s River.”

“I --you-- who -- who said I was kissing River-- or that she was kissing--!” he spluttered.

“Just because I see things that you don’t--”

“No! You do not! You're a bitey, mad lady who -- who leaps on people!” He stormed out of the room. He honestly believed sometimes that Iris was from another dimension. 

He nearly ran up to his flat when he heard someone moving with hesitant and heavy footfalls on the steps. He peeked into the stairwell and found River with one hand gripped hard on the rail while the other brushed against the wall. Her feet reached out and toed the air as they sought the next step down, favouring the injured leg. He wasn’t sure why but he cleared his throat like he was just coming through the room. She immediately changed to her head held high, back straight, and her hand now down by her side instead of touching the wall. Her feet reached boldly into darkness and dropped lightly to the next stair. It was probably how she normally walked, with no thought about where everything was and just knowing she’d find it.

She was hiding the damage from him, of how vulnerable she was right now and aggravated that she’s wasn’t the same person that she used to be in her mind’s eye. It both made his heart leap in seeing that same fierce independence he had while also making it sink that she felt she had to hide this.

“And where are you off to? ” he called with false cheer up the stairwell.

“Tired of breathing the same air,” she answered. “I’m going outside, enjoying something fresh and feel the sun. Or most likely the rain. It’s been threatening all day. That sounds good actually. The smell of dust after the rain.” 

He heard Iris moving around and then her voice. “It’s called petrichor. It’s Ancient Greek.” 

“I know, Auntie!” River called back and shook her head. “ Seriously, like she hasn’t told me it before.”

“I’m telling him, not you!”

He blushed at Iris’ voice, thinking about the kiss and bite just a few moments ago. He rushed up towards her. “I’m going with you.”

“I don’t need your help, Doctor.” 

“Didn’t say you did!” he replied brightly and clamoured up the stairs. He promptly slipped and landed nearly face first a few steps below her.

She laughed. “Thank goodness I don’t, sweetie. Bless. C’mon, I’ve got you.” 

When they got back to her flat with mist caught in their hair and the smell of fresh air clinging to their clothes, he found how right she had been about how stuffy it was here. He threw up the sashes on the line of three windows in her livingroom and let the air in to remove the staleness. He looked around to see what else he could do. She settled on one end of her sofa while he noticed an open book laying on the side table.

“Catching up on your read--” He slapped his hand over his mouth and mentally kicked himself down the stairs again. He didn’t know what to say to fix it, but she only grinned so he walked over and picked up the book. 

She heard him. “It’s what I was reading before, well you know. Wonder if I’ll ever finish it.”

“Don’t say that. This is all temporary and you know it.”

“Yes, I know.” But she said it quietly. “Thank you for opening the windows. It’s nice to hear the street.” 

“Oh I’ve read this! It’s one of my favourites!” Without anyone suggesting it or him even really thinking about it, he plunked himself down on the couch next to her. He had to wait while she readjusted herself after he had bounced her a bit by dropping down like that. She then leaned back while he started reading to her. He started from the beginning so the story flowed and loved when her voice would join his in quoting favorite parts.

  


It became a regular ritual. He looked forward to it all during his shifts at the hospital. Good day, bad day, mixed day, waiting for him at the end was sitting with River and talking and reading and laughing and just.... _River_.

His loss of detachment gave way to caring, not for her as his patient, but _her_. He was full blown attracted to her and thought he saw her returning it. She didn’t treat him as her doctor anymore or at least that’s what he hoped. As he read to her one night, she slipped off to sleep and drifted to pillowing her head on his shoulder. He moved slightly to find a more comfortable spot and she snuggled into his side. When he finally woke her to send her off to her bedroom, she simply smiled and moved away. She hadn’t regretted it.

It all could be the fiercely focused setting of being close together. It could be her feelings acting off his caring for her and being so close at hand. It could even, he feared, be as she once teased him, that his own feelings acted off her saving his life.

That was probably why he blurted the one evening, “Don’t call me that.”

“Call you what?”

“Sweetie.”

He could see her frown like a mask around the bandages. “I’m sorry, I wasn’t presuming--”

“No, it’s not that. But don’t call me it until you decide _want_ to call me it. After the bandages come off. “

She didn’t question what he meant about deciding she wanted to call him it. He was glad about that. But she did say, “Being able to see someone has nothing to do with what you think of them. Wouldn’t it be better if I decide without seeing you? Besides, I have seen you, as you very well know, when we were in the car park. Although I admit it’s a little foggy, with as rushed as we were.”

“Be serious, River. This is important.”

“Oo, you’ve gone all dramatic. Not that I mind.”

“I’ve never seen you, not completely. I’ve never seen your eyes.”

“And that’s important?”

“No! It’s not about _sight_ , River, don’t be silly. It’s -- it’s about _time_. When the bandages come off -- it’s about this time and will there be any time after this? Or will we be just flatmates? Well, not really flatmates because we don’t share a flat, but boxmates! Is there such a thing?” He didn’t want them to be close now, only to fool themselves and end up being people who only said hello as they passed in the hallway. 

She sighed. “I understand, sweetie.”

“The point is this time ends when you don’t have the bandages anymore. Then you decide, then _we_ decide... see?”

She paused to chuckle. “Only you would say that. Yes, John, I do understand. All right, no ‘sweetie’ until then. And then we’ll see.”

  


He felt awfully guilty about Melody Pond. Amy was right. Only River had the right to tell him something so deeply private, and yet here he was, still knowing it and never owning up to the fact that he did.

He sat next to her the one night and interrupted her easy conversation with the news he had something important to discuss. He heard himself say instead, “My name’s not John Smith. Not really. I changed it after -- after my life changed.” 

She said nothing for a moment and finally reached her hand out for his. “You know that I’m Melody Pond. No, it’s all right, John. It doesn’t mean you have to tell me this.”

He moved to hold her hand between his. It seemed so small, but Rory had bragged how he taught her his right hook and that she had knocked a man out with one punch. She had none of that ferocity now. She only cupped it around his.

“I took the story of your life before you were River Song,” he said in a hush. “I want to give you mine before John Smith. And before here.”

There was his Mum and Dad, of course. Good people, wonderful people, who had given him a name far from the ordinary John Smith. He had a good childhood with all the usual. He decided on medicine with the idea that he would go around the world, helping people who needed it the most like some sort of superhero. That’s when he met Mary.

“Mary Smith,” he expanded. “Honestly, that was her name. She used to joke about how you couldn’t get more common than that.”

She studied medicine too and they fell fast for each other. When they both finally earned their degrees, they were going to do everything they should do with their lives. First came love as the nursery rhyme went, then would come marriage, then would come a baby carriage with common enough names to go with hers like Jim and William and Elizabeth and Susan. They would tackle the world and help people along the way, and it’d be brilliant experience to educate their kids and grandkids. 

But one drunk driver causing a terrible wreck later and she was suddenly gone, taking with her the world and Jim, Bill, Lizzie, and little Susan.

“My parents were in the car with her. You can’t plan better than that to ruin a man’s life.”

He had barely gone on. He nearly dropped medical school and nearly was tossed out. “I didn’t want to go on.” But his mates wouldn’t let him shrivel up or give up. One day led to another and another. He changed his name by deed poll, “because I didn’t feel I was that person anymore. He died with them.” He finally decided to go forward because she couldn’t and made his name John Smith to go with hers.

River sat quietly with him the rest of the night.

  


So the time passed. They had bright moments such as him finding out River and Iris had an airline shipping company. “Iris taught me to fly, she taught me everything about it actually. The planes are all the same blue as the house.”

“Bluest blue you ever saw,” he said reverently. “Wait, is that how you saw those tombs?”

She nodded. “We have a contract with a variety of museums. Plus I’ve taken excavations out to their drop off points and then brought their supplies throughout the digs.”

“That’s brilliant! That’s the kind of work I want to do! We could go around the world, help the places that need it. You bring them the things they need for a better life and I help the sick. Rory could come with us! We’d make a great team, and Pond wants to be a writer. She ’s working with that journalist -- uh, Sarah Jane Smith -- now. Even those excavations must need a doctor around. Think of it, River!”

She laughed. “Here I thought you were trying to get me alone in an exotic jungle. Instead we’re having a family outing. Don’t apologize, I love the idea. And don’t think Iris is just going to sit here waiting for us all to come home. She’s not the type.”

And they had low moments such as him seeing a good looking guy going into River’s flat, all innuendo and flirtation. John blasted his stereo and sang as loud as he could to kill any mood going on in her place. She came downstairs and pounded on the door, yelling that she didn’t need to hear “Rebel, Rebel” that loud and she certainly didn’t need to hear his David Bowie imitation.

They had high spots like her telling him later that the good looking guy was a friend, her best mate, who took over her flights until she was back on her feet. That they were too alike to make it work as something other than friends and she had made enough disastrous choices in partners to ruin a great friendship. He told her about Rose and how she had left him for another man, but it was okay because he finally saw the other bloke was better for her. But--

“You don’t have to talk about it, John,” River said when he stopped.

“It’s not that. It’s just-- the part I feel really bad about is...”

She sat and waited, not pressing and not moving away from it. 

He finally let out the old pain in a long breath. “I was going to end it because... because it wasn’t giving me what I needed either. Not for the long term. ...I feel.... _horrible_ for that.”

She moved over closer. “It doesn’t change that you loved each other and had those good times. And it wasn’t wrong for you both to see you needed to move on. Better that than destroy what you had.”

It felt better talking about it. River told him the next day that she didn’t want him as her physician any more and should have said so earlier. He understood. He had held back on touching her too because of his being her doctor and they had shared enough at this point that it wasn’t right for her to be his official patient anymore.

Bad spots came again too like Amy laughing that River was a cat with nine lives. Every time they got really worried, she came out the survivor. Her niece chuckled and said she had used up the rest of her lives in that car park, but it was worth it.

John knew they were teasing, but his gut clenched at River using up her supposed last lives on him.

  


The day arrived when the bandages came off. The whole family showed up and John hugged a wall behind him. He didn’t breathe any more than Amy, Rory, or Iris and he recognized the brave face River put on for what it was.

Her opthamologist unwrapped the gauze and warn her to keep her eyes closed against the light until he told her to open them. He removed the sterile pads covering her eyelids and told her to slowly open them.

She did and squinted as her eyes danced around and blinked repeatedly. Her head seemed to move with no real direction, but just randomly at her family.

She squeezed her eyes shut again and blinked more. Amy choked back a sob right before River spoke. “You people are the most beautiful sight I have ever seen.”

That broke the dam. They rushed to her side with exclamations and kisses with hugs and effusive thanks to her doctor. John hung back, waiting.

Now he could really see _her_. No, that wasn’t it. He knew her from her words, her actions, the smile and smirk and grin, and the touches. Her knew her from Iris and Amy and Rory. But it was amazing to see those blue-green eyes with a light in them. If he had never seen it, he would still know and -- oh, yes -- fall for River. 

She found him. Slowly she smiled. The same one in his dream that brightened the dark. The same one that cut through the murk in the car park and told him she had come to save him.

He glanced down for a second, so overwhelmed with the happiness that he smiled, grinned, and glowed, before looking back to her eyes. “Hello.”

She was warm and throaty. “Hello.”

He couldn’t help it. He giggled and rubbed his hands rapidly together with total delight. But,he warned himself, she still hadn’t said _it_. 

She looked him up and down. “Iris was right, sweetie. Your chin is hilarious.”

Iris was right about something else. As soon as they were alone, River kissed him and he didn’t flail. He kissed her back. 

The next time, he kissed River first.

When they were together six months, he figured it was for real and not the all the reasons he feared only made it feel real. He actually had figured it out before, but it was a good time to recognize it. So he took her to a park on a starry night and spread out his coat for them on the ground. Then he told her his real name and she told him how she was Melody.

At eight months he asked her, “River Song, Melody Pond, will you be the woman who marries me?”

Her answering smile was radiant. "Oh, sweetie. What took you so long?" She kissed him or he kissed her. It didn't matter who kissed first. Before it went further, she reminded him, "You know you need my family's consent."

So they got married by the village shaman where they were bringing supplies and medicine deep into the jungle. Amy, Rory, and Iris stood for all both of them and the local chief mediated between John who had to prove himself worthy to Rory as River's male authority. Amy, River, and Iris had too good a time with that.

It was just them at the wedding at the top of the temple with the shaman taking them through the local ceremony. The villagers threw a wonderful celebration in their honour. Rory pulled John aside in the middle of it. "You know I got to ask. Is any of this legal? For home."

John grabbed him by the shoulders. "You're a good uncle, Rory Williams. Yes, I took care of it. It's all official. I wouldn't do that to River."

They traveled the world together and when they were married nearly three years, they brought home an older child that no one wanted for a son but them. His name was Arthur which River adored because it was Rory’s middle name. A year and a half later, they adopted a second child, a teenager named Jenny. She was their second child, but she was older than Arthur which made her their eldest.

They changed their work so at least one of them if not both were home in the blue box for the children. Sometimes they still went off together, mostly because John was flinging himself into danger and River swore he’d be killed if she wasn’t there to protect him. Sometimes it was a full family outing, just as they had once talk about, with Rory, Amy, and Iris as well as the children.

Sometimes John was John and sometimes he was his real name while River would be a Melody. She had never changed her name to John’s; he had made a face over it and she didn’t want to do it. They had found Arthur in Spain, so they used the culture’s naming convention. Jenny and Arthur Smith Song were their official names, but when Arthur began his career, he favoured Arthur Smith while his sister used Jenny Song.

The whole family turned out when Arthur got his doctorate in engineering, including Amy and Rory with their twins, and his great- grandparents Augustus and Tabitha. The youngest family member of the blue box always loved its mechanics and he found his future in Iris showing him how to change the world through tinkering. The whole family turned out again when Jenny took command of a solo expedition. River visibly strained not to jump in the plane to keep her daughter safe, but Iris laid a hand on her shoulder. Rory came up to her and whispered, "It's her time. You know that." Their niece stayed grounded and steadied.

Arthur married a lovely woman, Jessica, whom John thought was very Pond, and they named their first child Susan. Little Susan was the one who renamed the family business following a game with Iris one day and so Tardis Airlines with its blue box logo was born. John never could remember what the A and the I stood for in Tardis, but he declared the name was fantastic. He swept up Susan in his arms and spun her around. “You just wait, Susan Smith Song, until I show you the world!”

Jenny would ask once in a while, “Tell us how you met Mum.” Her dad had become a master at telling the tale, acting out the whole story boldly throughout the room, growling out the building ’s rumbles and shaking people’s chairs.

“And that’s how your mum saved me,” he always ended.

“Then you both saved me and Arthur, ” Jenny added.

He would nod and, depending on their ages and whether their thought kisses from their dad was cool or not, he’d drop one on the top of each of their heads. “Because that’s what we do in this family.”

Then he’d go find his wife if she was home and swoop River into an embrace, asking her to close her eyes and see if he was still her sweetie.


End file.
